Google has a ton of outstanding tools and software that many of us use every single day. But it hasan even longer list of products it has killedin about 25 years of its existence. And Stadia sits on top of that list like a crown jewel as a reminder that no Google product is safe from a similar fate. WhileStadia came to a foreseeable death earlier this year, it wasn’t like Google wasn’t bullish about it. A new report suggests that Google was about to buy Fortnite developer Epic Games to boost Android’s stature in the gaming world ahead of Stadia’s launch.
As the Google vs. Epic trial continues, we keep coming across new information that has so far remained under wraps. We recently learned thatGoogle gave Spotify a special fee waiver, with which it paid just a 4% fee for the transactions that went through Google Play while other app makers usually cough up a much higher 15% cut.There is a lot more to uncover from this antitrust lawsuit against Googlewhich could potentially have wide-reaching effects on the industry. But the latest scoop from the trial reveals that Google had once considered buying Epic Games — the same company it’s now locked horns with in a long-standing legal battle.
The folks atThe Vergespotted an internal email exchange revealing that Google was planning to buy a controlling stake in Epic Games way back in 2018. This takeover would have allowed Google to make Epic’s prized title Fortnite a staple of Android, driving up the OS’s authority in the smartphone gaming market. And by extension, it could also make it a critical part of Stadia, which would come out the following year. Fortnite and any game Epic would develop in the future could have been part of the game streaming service,but that’s a lost cause now.
This is the email from June 23, 2025:
We are bringing a package offering to BC on Thursday re Epic. Spoke to Jamie and I think we need a couple pages about what investment could look like and someone there to discuss (based on whatever we can glean publicly). We just did a prep call and investment was the only way people could realistically think of to sway them on Epic’s approach to Android — because it’s easy to imagine us investing billions ant some ridiculous valuation (for everyone except for the corpdev folks).
Only a couple of weeks back, it was revealed thatGoogle even tried paying Epic Games $147 millionto have Fortnite listed exclusively on the Play Store in 2021, but the developer refused the offer. But Google approving this move internally and making an offer gives us a sneak peek into what goes on behind closed doors and how a large player may be offered extra perks while the lack of a level playing field negatively affects other smaller developers.
This wasn’t Google’s last attempt at having its own game studio, either. The search giant did set up one to create and publish exclusive first-party games on Stadia,but it too was killedabout two years before the ultimate demise of the user-facing game streaming service. That move naturally shook confidence in Google’s efforts towards Stadia given Google itself was giving up on creating games for its own service.
